The Revolt of Man | Page 5

cross-examine his wife. Then look at the recent case at Cambridge."
"Yes," said the Professor; "that is bad indeed."
"The husband--a man of hitherto blameless character,--young, well- born, handsome, good at his trade, and with some pretensions to the higher culture--sentenced to penal servitude for life for striking his wife, one of the senior fellows of Trinity!"
The Professor's eyes flashed.
"As you are going out of office to-day, my Lady Home Secretary, and can do no more justice for a while, I will tell you the truth of that case. The wife was tired of her husband. It was a most unhappy match. She wanted to marry another man, so she trumped up the charge; that is the disgraceful truth. No fishwife of Billingsgate could have lied more impudently. He, in accordance with our no doubt most just and well-intentioned, laws, becomes a convict for the rest of his days; she marries again. Everybody knows the truth, but nobody ventures to state it. She banged her own arm black and blue herself with the poker, and showed it in open court as the effects of his violence. As for her husband, I visited him in prison. He was calm and collected. He says that he is glad there are no children to lament his disgrace, that prison life is preferable to living any longer with such a woman, and that, on the whole, death is better than life when an innocent man can be so treated in a civilised country."
"Poor man!" groaned Constance. "Stay; I have a few hours yet of power. His name?" she sprang to her desk.
"John Phillips--no; Phillips is the wife's name. I forgot that the sentence itself carries divorce with it. His bachelor name was Coryton."
Constance wrote rapidly.
"John Coryton. He shall be released. A free pardon from the Home Secretary cannot be appealed against. He is free."
She sprang from the table and rang the bell. Her private secretary appeared.
"This despatch to be forwarded at once," she said. "Not a moment's delay."
"Constance!" The Professor seized her hand. "You will have the thanks of every woman who knows the truth. All those who do not will curse the weakness of the Home Secretary."
"I care not," she said. "I have done one just action in my short term of office. I--who looked to do so many good and just actions!"
"It is difficult, more difficult than one ever suspects, for a Minister to do good. Alas! my dear, John Coryton's case is only one of many."
"I know," replied Constance sighing. "Yet what can I do! Our greatest enemies are--ourselves. Oh, Professor! when I think of the men working at their looms from morning until night, cooking the dinners and looking after the children, while the women sit about the village pump or in their clubs, to talk unmeaning politics---Tell me, logician, why our theories are all so logical, and our practice is so bad?"
"Everything," said the Professor, "in our system is rigorously logical and just. If it could not be proved scientifically--if it were not absolutely certain--the system could never be accepted by the exact intellect of cultivated women. Have not Oxford and Cambridge proclaimed this from a hundred pulpits and in a thousand text-books? My dear Lady Carlyon, you yourself proved it when you took your degree in the most brilliant essay ever written."
The Countess winced.
"Must we, then," she asked, "cease to believe in logic?"
"Nay," replied Professor Ingleby; "I said not that. But every conclusion depends upon the minor premiss. That, dear Countess, in the case of our system, appears to me a little uncertain."
"But where is the uncertainty? Surely you will allow me, my dear Professor,"--Constance smiled,--"although I am only a graduate of two years' standing, to know enough logic to examine a syllogism?"
"Surely, Constance. My dear, I do not presume to doubt your reasoning powers. It was only an expression of perplexity. We are so right, and things go so wrong."
Both ladies were silent for a few moments, and Constance sighed.
"For instance," the Professor went on, "we were logically right when we suppressed the Sovereignty. In a perfect State, the head must also be perfect. Whom, then, could we acknowledge as head but the Perfect Woman? So we became a pure theocracy. Then, again, we were right when we abolished the Lower House; for in a perfect State, the best rulers must be those who are well-born, well-educated, and well-bred. All this requires no demonstration. Yet--"
But the Countess shook her head impatiently, and sprang to her feet.
"Enough, Professor! I am tired of debates and the battles of phrase. The House may get on without me. And I will inquire no more, even of you, Professor, into the foundations of faith, constitution, and the rest of it. I am brave, when I rise in my place, about the unalterable principles of